During Fall Orientation, on August 25th, the Department of Computer Science (CS) at Stony Brook University (SBU) held a ceremony to present its faculty and staff with a number of recognition awards. During the ceremony, over 10 awards were given to faculty and staff in acknowledgment of their excellence in research, teaching and service.

During the ceremony, the newly established Kieburtz Young Scholar in Computer Science award was presented to CS faculty member Donald Porter. The Kieburtz Award was established in 2014 in memory of Dr. Richard Kieburtz, the founding chair of SBU’s Department of Computer Science.

Upon receiving the award, Porter said, “I am humbled and honored to be selected for this award. Kieburtz was an exemplary scholar whose research continued throughout his life.” Porter is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at SBU who received his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin in 2010. In 2012, Porter also received the National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program award for his project, Beyond Virtual Hardware: VMM/OS Co-Design for Lightweight, Flexible Virtualization.

According to Dr. Ari Kaufman, Chairman of the CS department, the Kieburtz Award was created for preeminent starting scholars in computer science in honor of Dr. Kieburtz’s passion for computer science education. “He is the only person that I know who has established two computer science departments from the ground-up,” says Kaufman. Richard Kieburtz, who passed away in November 2013, became the founding chair of Stony Brook’s Department of Computer Science in 1969; he and later went on to establish the department of computer science and engineering at Oregon Health and Science University. Kieburtz received his PhD in Electrical Engineering at the University of Washington. After his postdoctoral studies at Stanford University, Kieburtz changed his academic focus to computer science. Kieburtz’s widow, Nancy Kieburtz, said that the award created in her late husband’s memory is a “Lovely idea and I know how pleased Dick would be.”

About the Department

The Department of Computer Science at SBU is ranked among the top 20 computer science departments in the nation. Interdisciplinary collaboration and research recognition elevates and attracts internationally renowned faculty who have made significant contributions in visual computing, networking, computer systems, cybersecurity, algorithms, verification, and intelligent computing.